Louis Gossett Jr revealed he 'wasn't afraid to die' and said 'heaven was going to be a great time' in final interview - two months before actor's death at 87

Louis Gossett Jr revealed he 'wasn't afraid to die' in his final interview two months before his death aged 87 on Thursday.

Oscar-winner Gossett Jr., known for his performances in An Officer And A Gentleman and Jaws III, died in Santa Monica, California. No cause of death was given, however, he had previously announced in 2010 that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. 

In a January interview with People, Gossett Jr. reflected on his mortality, saying: 'I’m not afraid to die and the fact of going to heaven. I know they are having some great concerts up there."

'I know that and my heroes and heroines are up there and I think it's different from what we think it is and the old days," he added. "I think after we make that transition, I think it's going to be a great time.'

Known for his decades-long career with further appearances in The Color Purple and Roots, Gossett revealed this past year that he gave up a potential professional basketball career with the New York Knicks when he decided to head to Hollywood.   

He earned his first acting credit in his Brooklyn high school's production of You Can't Take It with You while he was sidelined from the basketball team with an injury.

'I was hooked — and so was my audience,' he wrote in his 2010 memoir An Actor And A Gentleman.

Known for his athletic build and dominating presence on stage and screen, Gossett Jr starred in a number of demanding roles including his Oscar-winning turn as drill sergeant Emil Foley in Officer And A Gentleman in 1982.  

The hard-man image he achieved in that role catapulted him to Hollywood fame, emulating the drill sergeant patois in 1989's The Punisher and repeat appearances in the Iron Eagle franchise. 

After his early Broadway success, he broke through on the small screen as Fiddler in the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries Roots, which depicted the atrocities of slavery on TV. The sprawling cast included Ben Vereen, LeVar Burton and John Amos.

He won an Emmy for the role, which earned the young actor national fame as a staggering 100million viewers tuned in for the final episode. 

Gossett once said of landing the role: 'All the top African-American actors were asked, and I begged to be in there. I got the best role, I think. It was wonderful.'  

His final on-screen appearance came in the 2023 Oscar-nominated film The Color Purple. According to his IMDB, the actor had 12 upcoming projects in the works at the time of his death, including Ryan Reynolds' upcoming animation IF. 

Gossett Jr's decades-long acting career quickly took off after his first performance in high school, as an English teacher urged him to go into Manhattan to try out for the production of Take a Giant Step. 

He got the part and debuted on Broadway in 1953 aged 16. 

'I knew too little to be nervous,' Gossett wrote of his acting break. 'In retrospect, I should have been scared to death as I walked onto that stage, but I wasn't.'

Gossett attended New York University on a basketball and drama scholarship. He was soon acting and singing on TV shows hosted by stars including David Susskind, Ed Sullivan, Red Buttons, Merv Griffin, Jack Paar and Steve Allen.

Before he became a firm favorite in Hollywood circles, he was known to be friendly with James Dean and studied acting with Marilyn Monroe, Martin Landau and Steve McQueen at an offshoot of the Actors Studio taught by Frank Silvera.

He made his first on-screen appearance in 1957 on the NBC anthology series The Big Show.

In 1959, Gossett received critical acclaim for his role in the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun along with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands.

He went on to become a star on Broadway, replacing Billy Daniels in Golden Boy with Sammy Davis Jr. in 1964.

Gossett went to Hollywood for the first time in 1961 to make the film version of A Raisin In The Sun. He had bitter memories of that trip, staying in a cockroach-infested motel that was one of the few places to allow Black people. 

In 1968, he returned to Hollywood for a major role in Companions in Nightmare, NBC's first made-for-TV movie that starred Melvyn Douglas, Anne Baxter and Patrick O'Neal.

In this turn, the young actor had several clashes with discrimination and racism that he took with him the rest of his career. Alongside his acting, he also founded the anti-racism organization, the Eracism Foundation. 

After arriving in Hollywood for the NBC flick, Gossett was booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel and Universal Studios had rented him a convertible. 

Driving back to the hotel after picking up the car, he was stopped by a Los Angeles County sheriff's officer who ordered him to turn down the radio and put up the car's roof before letting him go.

Within minutes, he was stopped by eight sheriff's officers, who had him lean against the car and made him open the trunk while they called the car rental agency before letting him go.

'Though I understood that I had no choice but to put up with this abuse, it was a terrible way to be treated, a humiliating way to feel,' Gossett wrote in his memoir. 'I realized this was happening because I was Black and had been showing off with a fancy car — which, in their view, I had no right to be driving.'

After dinner at the hotel, he went for a walk and was stopped a block away by a police officer, who told him he broke a law prohibiting walking around residential Beverly Hills after 9 p.m. 

Two other officers arrived and Gossett said he was chained to a tree and handcuffed for three hours. He was eventually freed when the original police car returned.

'Now I had come face-to-face with racism, and it was an ugly sight,' he wrote. 'But it was not going to destroy me.'

In the late 1990s, Gossett said he was pulled over by police on Pacific Coast Highway while driving his restored 1986 Rolls Royce Corniche II. 

The officer told him he looked like someone they were searching for, but the officer recognized Gossett and left.

Gossett made a series of guest appearances on such shows as Bonanza, The Rockford Files, The Mod Squad, McCloud and a memorable turn with Richard Pryor on The Partridge Family.

In August 1969, Gossett had a bizarre near-brush with convicted killer and cult-leader Charles Manson, after he was invited to actress Sharon Tate's home while partying with members of the band Mamas and the Papas. 

He headed home first to shower and change clothes. As he was getting ready to leave, he caught a news flash on TV about Tate's murder. She and others were killed by Charles Manson's associates that night.

'There had to be a reason for my escaping this bullet,' he wrote.

Born on May 27, 1936, in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, New York, his father Louis Sr., was a porter, and mother Hellen, a nurse. He later added Jr. to his name to honor his father. 

Gossett became the third Black Oscar nominee in the supporting actor category in 1983. He won for his performance as the intimidating Marine drill instructor in An Officer And A Gentleman opposite Richard Gere and Debra Winger. He also won a Golden Globe for the same role.

'More than anything, it was a huge affirmation of my position as a Black actor,' he wrote in his memoir.

'The Oscar gave me the ability of being able to choose good parts in movies like Enemy Mine, Sadat and Iron Eagle, Gossett said in Dave Karger's 2024 book 50 Oscar Nights.'

He said his statue was in storage.

'I'm going to donate it to a library so I don't have to keep an eye on it,' he said in the book. 'I need to be free of it.'

Gossett appeared in such TV movies as The Story of Satchel Paige, Backstairs at the White House, The Josephine Baker Story, for which he won another Golden Globe, and Roots Revisited.

But he said winning an Oscar didn't change the fact that all his roles were supporting ones.

He played an obstinate patriarch in the 2023 remake of The Color Purple.

Gossett struggled with alcohol and cocaine addiction for years after his Oscar win. He went to rehab, where he was diagnosed with toxic mold syndrome, which he attributed to his house in Malibu.

In 2010, Gossett announced he had prostate cancer, which he said was caught in the early stages. In 2020, he was hospitalized with Covid-19.

He is survived by sons Satie, a producer-director from his second marriage, and Sharron, a chef whom he adopted after seeing the seven-year-old in a TV segment on children in desperate situations. His first cousin is actor Robert Gossett.

Gossett's first marriage to Hattie Glascoe was annulled. His second, to Christina Mangosing, ended in divorce in 1975 as did his third to actor Cyndi James-Reese in 1992.